It was just a few weeks ago that Gov. Tim Kaine was telling Virginians that this is “a time of tremendous challenge” in which Virginia “citizens and businesses have to tighten their belts and live within their means.” And so does the Commonwealth’s government, according to Kaine, who faces a recessionary economy and declining state revenues. Handling this dire situation will require extraordinary efforts by state leaders, especially the governor. So why does Kaine suddenly think Virginia will do just fine with a part-time chief executive in Richmond?
In case anyone missed the news, Kaine plans to continue as governor, while serving “part-time” as chairman of the Democratic National Committee until his term in Richmond ends in 2010. He’s either deluding Virginians – or himself. At the DNC, he will have his hands full as the chief political spokesmen for President-elect Barack Obama. Being DNC chairman also requires him to represent the party in the media and on the rubber chicken circuit, raise funds and manage the ranks of a Washington entity that still merits Will Rogers’ famous denial that it is “an organized political party.” Kaine will feel pressure to focus on the DNC because of his success in building the Virginia Democratic party, which since his election in 2005 has regained control of the state senate, elected two U.S. senators, and carried the state for the party’s presidential nominee for the first time in four decades. That’s the kind of batting average that generates demands that you be an everyday player.
Such demands will inevitably drain the time Kaine will have available to focus on Virginia’s yawning budget deficit. Anyone who doubts this should listen to what Kaine said when first asked about reports he would be offered the DNC job. “I don’t view that, frankly, as consistent with being governor, so I’m going to be governor. I would view it as taking my eye too much off the ball about things that need to happen here.”
Kaine would have perhaps profited from discussing the DNC job with former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, who served as Republican National Committee Chairman during the final year of his tenure in Richmond. That didn’t turn out well in great part because Gilmore found himself having to devote too much time to internecine political squabbles with the Bush White House political operation. Presidents invariably view party national committees as mere appendages of their White House political staff, and it is often the national chairman who is left to cope with the time-consuming conflicts that follow.
